Yost High Ability

~WISHFUL WEDNESDAY~

I would like to wish all of my Yost Families a Happy Thanksgiving and hope you have a wonderful break. Enjoy this time with your family and I can’t wait to see everyone back on Monday!

Weekly Quote.

This week I only met with my Language Arts groups. Due to the short week, we did not have a weekly quote. We will be back to our normal schedule next week and here is our weekly sneak peek. This will be our last week focusing on displaying the right attitude to get a job done in the room.

Here are our last two friends I have to share with you from our Character of the Month Club. These are two more of our friends that displayed the qualities of a good leader in our room during the month of October.

LANGUAGE ARTS

1st Grade: Connecting Letters and Language: We started class this week reviewing our worksheet we ended with last week. When we went over it in class, using a different color marker to show the change of one letter in a word. This was a way to help them visualize the change easier. It also made it easier as we worked down the sheet to figure out our next word. Next, we took a few minutes to summarize what we learned with the hamburger model of writing to persuade our audience.

We put the words of a song to Mary Had a Little Lamb as a reminder to the writing process we were introduced to. To end the day, it was time to decipher our next secret message. This time we practiced the Over Under Substitution Cipher. After a minute or so of looking at the message - we came to the conclusion we had 6 words in our new message. Then I showed them how to decipher the first word - after that they were off to decoding and were thrilled to discover our new message - Hip, Hip Hooray for the Alphabet! As a class, we talked about what we thought that meant and they shared their excitement for letters and how the 26 letters we know as our alphabet create all the words we know how to speak. Then we related this message back to our worksheet - they were asked to make a connection to what happens when we change just one letter. This let the children see just how important of a tool the alphabet is to all of us!

On Tuesday, we read a story together The Disappearing Alphabet. This began right were we left off from yesterday - explaining the importance of the alphabet. The book walked us through each of the 26 letters and slowly we would see what would happen without the existence of that letter. We would lose so many words that we use everyday. After reading the story together we summarized that without any letters we could not make any words, which would meant we could not read, or write, or speak. To end the day the children began to fill out a reading analyzer. This is a worksheet the children will see throughout the year to have a better understanding of the materials we read. Since, this is our first time using it we are walking through the directions and completing it together. We will continue working with our analyzer next week.

2nd Grade: Point of View and Connections: We started the day by revisiting our predictions from before we read the book. The children were asked to look them over and either add to them or change them based on what we know now. Then as a class we wrote out two of our predictions and added them to our wall. We began to look closer at who is Edward Tulane and what do you think he is like. We wrote what we thought from before the book and then what we know about him now. Each child added a post-it note to the wall to follow their prediction as it changes.

We began class on Tuesday revisiting - who is Edward Tulane? Some children struggled with defining him further with our new information from the book. We took what the class knew from before the book of him being a bunny and then made a web of ideas of what we know now - he is fragile, he is a china rabbit, he is breakable, and white porcelain - these were some of the descriptions they were able to say to answer completely and define who is Edward Tulane now. Then I explained that these are the details we are looking for them to add to their predictions and thoughts as we travel further through the book.

The children were introduced to the term point of view. We wanted to take what they already knew about this idea and relate it to the idea of our connections. I asked them to think if they have or had a special stuffed animal or toy like Abilene did in our story - and how they felt if they ever lost it. This allowed each child a moment to share their connection to the story with something they each treasure. To end the class and keeping our focus on point of view - we read chapters 9 and 10 together. We shared our thoughts on the change we see in Edward. We will look at this further next week.

3rd Grade: Fables - Grammar: We started class off with a little bit of sharing, as we discussed some of our favorite memories with Thanksgiving and the upcoming Holidays. After, a conversation that had us hungry for some of our favorite yummy treats it was time to work. They were given some time to finish their reading analyzer from the Lion and the Mouse. Then we looked back at each box to see what we gathered from the story. We looked back at our box on description and to add more details we revisited the idea of the movie we visualize when hearing or reading the story. This allowed more details to fill this box after clarifying. We also added to the main idea of the story. They came up with the first one, but we talked about sometimes there can be more than one lesson.

On Tuesday, it was all about grammar. To complete today's lesson we used the story The Lion and the Mouse. They went through the passage and highlighted all of the nouns and action words. Then they had to go back and look for all of the adjectives. Next, we added a new part to grammar and we talked about what a sentence needs to be complete - with the focus on a simple sentence. After breaking apart a sentence to a subject noun and verb - we asked if this could stand alone? The answer was yes. Now we shifted our focus and came up with a list to describe the verb and a list for the noun. We quickly identified these to lists as adverbs and adjectives. Then we added one from each to our simple sentence and watched it grow. To end the day we broke the sentence into the complete subject and predicate. This was a lot we added into our grammar day we will re-visit it some next week.

4th Grade: Change Makers: My 4th graders are continuing to work on their Biography projects. I only met with some of them on Monday because of NWEA testing. I am going to start allowing them the option to utilize their lunch recess to come into the room for extra time to work on their projects. This is just an option for those that would like to utilize more classroom time and resources. However, if a student misses a deadline then they will be required to come in at recess to work on their project until they are caught up.

I did not get meet with my friends on Tuesday with them continuing their NWEA testing. This will allow the students an extra week to gather their resources for class. We will look at the due dates and adjust them accordingly for missing this week. Next week all students should have their resources selected and will continue to work on the biography summary. We will look over the packet and I will answer any questions the students have as they move onto the next step for this project.